Its great to be a 1st Cohort CIRCLE Visiting Fellow. In the last couple of days, I have been part of a 40 member Summer School of the System Dynamics Society, held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA from 15 to 17 July 2015. Participants were from various countries - 13 in all (including USA, France, UK, Australia, Italy, Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroun (Canadian), Mexico, South Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, Oman) - were in attendance. It was a great opportunity of networking and interacting with renowned experts in the field. One of the Facilitators of the Summer School, Andy Ford has been in practice since 1967. The least experienced amongst the Facilitators of the Summer School had fifteen years of consistent, well funded practice in the field of System Dynamics. It is a good thing that there is CIRCLE; but the School made me realise that for anyone to be visible in any field of research, there has to dogged practice in that endeavour. Apart from meeting experts I have ever wished to meet in the field at the Summer School, I was able to also interact with those from Africa with the aim of strengthening our collaborative efforts. Hopefully, a Kenya-Nigeria Collaboration will blossom in the years ahead in the areas of SD practices as a methodology and application to examining systems in their entirety, including climate change, sustainable development, health system etc.

In one of the final presentations, there was a blend of models used for the analysis. This was well funded by USAID on climate change related study on Limpopo Region in South Africa.

Now the African Chapter holds an annual Conference in Kenya every January. New members are welcome to join. And in case anyone is interested in know the basics of the System Dynamics for their anaylsis, there is a training slated for University of Ibadan later this year.

I believe CIRCLE is a good forum for all participants to grasp what it takes to be globally relevant and become visible in research and the academia. Conference follows in the couple of days ahead!

Thank you DFID. Thank you ACU. Thank you AAS. I believe it is the beginning. More will come.

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